


Lumiere and Plumette in the Past: How He Saw Her

by noblewriting



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017), Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, they're just kiddos but awwww so adorable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 00:31:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10651293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblewriting/pseuds/noblewriting
Summary: "Can you do a fanfiction of young Lumiere and Plumette falling in love? Or just the first time they kissed?"~Tumblr anonI'd love to, but I haven't time to tell that tale now. How about the first time Lumiere met Plumette? (this story can accompany "Lit by the Sun," which also tells an episode in the Plumiere relationship.)





	Lumiere and Plumette in the Past: How He Saw Her

They have been friends for so long. Lumiere remembers when he first saw her—or really, first properly saw her—because in his first glance around the kitchen she had been just a girl. Just a girl! Mon dieu! How had he ever seen her in such a pale light as that?

When he first saw her truly, he had been running helter-skelter down the palace hallway, his hands still cupped over his ears, only fifteen and a footman. The Master had thrown a vase, and his face had been the target; usually Lumiere had been able to slide out of reprimand by a smooth remark or a well-timed smile, but today nothing would do, and Lumiere and the child and whoever else was around were all to blame for everything. Lumiere slipped out, and hid his head, and ran.

And bash, he ran into something. No—merde! Someone. Blankets and sheets and white linen everywhere, making the hallway look buried in snow.

“Oh! No—oh……”

Fawn-brown hands crossed his waxy white ones in stooping to pick up the bed sheets.

“I am so sorry, mademoiselle—truly so apologétique—”

“You’re from Paris,” she said, and the smile that flitted across her face surprised him.

“Tiens! Why—yes, yes, I come from that city. Do you—you know it?” Stupid question. Of course she knows it. It’s Paris, you fool. 

“I came from there too! I moved away only three years ago. The plague,” she says, and he understands. He catches up more blankets, and she does too. They are silent for too long; two teenagers, unsure of their way around words.

“You’re the footman who talked his way into a position,” Plumette says.

“I am that footman,” says Lumiere. “Though you could argue that it was not so much me talking my way into the position as Cogsworth letting himself be talked into giving it away.”

She laughs, and he is surprised—again—at how ready she is with joy. Her eyes turn to liquid when she laughs!

“I think Cogsworth likes you,” and she’s teasing, and he finds smiles cracking over his face. “He’s going to make you maître’d eventually, I heard him say so.”

“Did he? And what does he plan to make you?”

“A piece of bric-a-brac,” and she laughs again. “You know I am only here to cheer everyone up by being beautiful and useless.”

She’s only fourteen, and already cocky as the day is long. God bless such an outcast, that pushed him out of Paris and into the same palace as himself.

The blankets are heaped back in Plumette’s basket; she prepares herself to go. But a brief hesitancy—an eyebrow skidding up by her ringlets—tells Lumiere there’s something more.

“It’s…childish, I know,” she says. “But I’ve been so lonely here of late. Would you—when your duties are done—”

The words are fumbling again. Lumiere takes one sheet off the basket—just one, that won’t be missed.

“You know, in Paris they do shadow-shows,” he says, “and hang a sheet up on the wall, and cast their light upon it to make hands look human, and toys dance like people do. I’ve always wondered how it was done, but never dared try it myself.”

“Oui,” she says, though there is no question.

“Oui?” he says, though that was no answer. “At 6?”

“At 7,” she says, and is gone like a bird.

That was the first time we met, he thinks. And that was the first time she lit up my room.


End file.
